Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD s/390 Port in the works

Posted by timothy on from the very-beginnings dept.

brad-x writes: "It appears that an enterprising gentleman has taken the time to port FreeBSD to the s/390. It needs some work yet, as his project page suggests, but if he makes it happen it will definitely be very cool. Check it out!"

23 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Does this mean that... by j-turkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since the S/390 is a pretty parallel architecture...does this mean that the FreeBSD kernel is getting better at SMP?

    Does it run with more than 2 processors on the 390?

    Is the 2 CPU limitation an X86-only thing that I'm ignorant of (quite possible)?

    That's not to say that I don't love the BSD's, but they do have (or maybe they had) their limitations.


    -Turkey

    --

    -Turkey

    1. Re:Does this mean that... by questionlp · · Score: 4, Informative

      5.0-CURRENT includes SMPng which is supposed to improve MP performance dramatically by knocking away that single giant lock. I have heard people running FreeBSD on a quad Intel processor setup a while ago on freebsd-questions... though I'm not sure how well performance would scale compared to a dual processor setup of the same processor speed.

      I haven't been able to fully parse the boot log, so I'm not sure if it is utilizing more than one processor or not, but the thing that the write-up forgot to mention was that it was tested under the S/390 emulator (aka Hercules). I'm not sure what Hercules is and how it work per se... but it's still a huge jump forward for FreeBSD.

    2. Re:Does this mean that... by Ded+Bob · · Score: 2

      The complement to SMPng for FreeBSD (v5) is Kernel Scheduled Entities (KSE). The third milestone was just recently added to CURRENT: KSE-MIII Merged Into Current (5.0).

      FreeBSD v5 will be a speed daemon. :)

    3. Re:Does this mean that... by hubertf · · Score: 2

      > Is the 2 CPU limitation an X86-only thing that
      > I'm ignorant of (quite possible)?

      I've ran NetBSD on a quad-Xeon machine.

      - Hubert

    4. Re:Does this mean that... by Strog · · Score: 3, Informative

      It isn't really a 2CPU limitation per-sey. The problem is performance has diminishing returns as you go past 2 cpus. Giant kernel lock means that one cpu has access to the memory space at a time and this is why performance can't scale well with this design.

      The good news is that it works remarkably well on 1 or 2 cpu systems. It beat the performance of Linux 2.2 kernels and still gives 2.4 kernels a run for their money in most situations. When you start running mores cpus then performance will only go up a little bit so it really isn't worth it at that point.

      FreeBSD 5.0 will not have this limitation and will scale nicely. I'm just not sure how far it will go at first but you can be sure that it will improve from there now that a decent setup for SMP is in place now (with 5.0).

    5. Re:Does this mean that... by Moridineas · · Score: 2

      The good news is that it works remarkably well on 1 or 2 cpu systems. It beat the performance of Linux 2.2 kernels and still gives 2.4 kernels a run for their money in most situations. When you start running mores cpus then performance will only go up a little bit so it really isn't worth it at that point

      Do you have any benchmarks or anything (non-anecdotal)? I've been looking for a side-to-side type comparison for awhile.

    6. Re:Does this mean that... by Strog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I used to have several because I wondered the same questions. All my links are either dead or updated to 5.0 figures. Ignore the rest of my post if you consider it "too anecdotal".

      I've seen some inhouse testing with identical hardware with both Linux 2.4 and FreeBSD 4.x tuned for performance. They would go back and forth in some real-world testing with the edge in raw performance going to Linux more often. Usually the differences weren't that much but sometimes there was a clear winner.

      I would suggest that you get some hardware to test with and use both on this hardware in the situation(s) that you are going to put it in. It is real easy to get a system that each can support the hardware. If one or the other doesn't support the hardware you want or very well then go with the OS that supports the hardware well.

      For me, the real choice is outside of the scope of raw performance since they are fairly close (close enough for me at least). A couple factors I look at.

      1. A moderate to heavy loaded FreeBSD box still responds well while a Linux box under the same load will become extremely sluggish or unresponsive.

      2. Updating the system is more solid in FreeBSD than Linux. Apt-get and other mechanisms work well but usually have more issues for me at least. Following -stable is very easy in FreeBSD.

      3. Experience. Which system is the admin more comfortable with? If they have experience BSD or other traditional Unix then FreeBSD is the way to go. If they are more comfortable with Linux then it really needs to factor in to the choice.

      4. Number of processors. If the number goes over 2 then you need to go Linux or look into FreeBSD 5.0 if you can wait or run the development versions. Probably Linux will suit you better on your quad+ box for now at least. It will take some time to wring the most out of FreeBSD 5.x

      These are all opinions and suggestions. Use both in your setup and see which works for you. Alternately you could tell them both to take a hike and get an Irix box. That would open a whole new set of things to look at.

    7. Re:Does this mean that... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 2

      Hercules does have the ability to emulate multiprocessor 390s. It will use multiple processors on the host system if available to givce increased performance.

      --
      Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
  2. More the merrier by atcurtis · · Score: 2, Interesting


    The more platforms supported, the merrier it will be.

    Although, I don't expect to see FreeBSD on anywhere near the same number of platforms as NetBSD.

    I'd like to see FreeBSD 5 running on RS/6000 hardware... That would be nice ;)

    --
    -- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
    -- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
    1. Re:More the merrier by glitchvern · · Score: 4, Informative

      Intrestingly enough NetBSD does not run on the 390.

    2. Re:More the merrier by Sivar · · Score: 2

      Of course it doesn't run NetBSD!

      --
      Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
  3. NetBSD isn't on that platform by glitchvern · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The thing I think is interesting about this port is that it puts freebsd on the s/390 while NetBSD isn't. They do say a port of NetBSD to the s/390 would be relatively staightforward though.

    1. Re:NetBSD isn't on that platform by overbom · · Score: 2, Insightful

      NetBSD's priority isn't as a server OS; its priority is to be on multiple architectures to be an embedded system.

      At least, that's what the head guy said in his recent interview.

    2. Re:NetBSD isn't on that platform by foonf · · Score: 2

      But why port NetBSD to the S/390 when it runs on the VAX already?

      --

      "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
    3. Re:NetBSD isn't on that platform by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 2, Funny

      The thing I think is interesting about this port is that it puts freebsd on the s/390 while NetBSD isn't.

      Think about it more practically:
      A lot more people have toasters than have S/390's.

    4. Re:NetBSD isn't on that platform by hubertf · · Score: 2

      And it will do what in the embedded application?
      Server type things, of course! :-)

      - Hubert

  4. Re:I'll check it out as soon as... by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3

    The page for the port says it's being done on Hercules, which is a System/390 and z/Architecture simulator; the Hercules page claims it runs on Linux and 32-bit Windows, but it can probably be made to run on UNIXes other than Linux as well, assuming it doesn't Just Work out of the box.

  5. Re:I'll check it out as soon as... by brad-x · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is a FreeBSD port of the emulator in /usr/ports/emulators/hercules; if you're running another BSD flavor and it doesn't have this port you'll likely have an easy time importing it.

    --
    // -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ -- //
  6. Re:Kind of silly. by rsidd · · Score: 2, Insightful
    They have some odd priorities.

    Um, it's just one guy doing this, so far and he'll do whatever interests him, obviously. If all free software people did what was "needed" and not what was personally interesting to them, commercial OS's would be extinct by now.

  7. Re:Kind of silly. by treat · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Um, it's just one guy doing this, so far and he'll do whatever interests him, obviously. If all free software people did what was "needed" and not what was personally interesting to them, commercial OS's would be extinct by now.

    Indeed. Look at all the poor free software that there are multiple, independent, poor versions of. (e.g. DVD/mpeg players, web browsers, word processors, financial software, file managers). If people had coordinated, with a goal of producing what was needed, instead of each writing their own software independently because of what they personally wanted, the free solutions would be so vastly superior to the commercial solutions that only the free ones would survive. Unfortunately, this almost never happens.

  8. Re:I'll check it out as soon as... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 2

    the Hercules page claims it runs on Linux and 32-bit Windows, but it can probably be made to run on UNIXes other than Linux as well, assuming it doesn't Just Work out of the box.
    As noted, it's in the FreeBSD packages tree. I plan to get it running on MacOS X by the time the next release is out, now that I've got a Mac to run it on. It will run on most Unixoid OSes with tweaking to remove Linux-specific SCSI tape and TUN/TAP code.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
  9. Re:limits by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 2

    Baloney. There are 58 ports of NetBSD. Linux can't even come close.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
  10. Re:I wonder what it would be like ... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Before people get too excited about topics such as SMP, kernel threads, and I/O devices -- it only partially boots
    Yeah...the project isn't to the point where it's usable for anything but system hacking yet.

    on a mainframe emulator.
    If it runs on Hercules, it'll run on the real hardware. Before you pooh-pooh the use of an emulator, consider that Alan Cox uses Hercules for S/390 work (not all of it, but quite a bit).

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!